372 Proceedings of the British Parliament. 



of empire, and wrought with the trophies of a thousand battles, and the 

 still more splendid trophies of immortal conquests of the mind, has 

 been cast down to make room for this new and wild erection of a despotic 

 and savage supremacy. 



The fact is beyond all denial, no matter in what language it may be 

 told, or by what national pride we may attempt to disguise it from 

 ourselves. Under the present cabinet, England has become a secondary 

 power ; and, as if to rebuke us for having put our trust in a military 

 name, this humiliation has been inflicted on us by arms, whose purpose 

 our cabinet could not blunt, whose progress it dared not oppose, and 

 whose final objects it can now learn only by conjecture, as it can resist 

 only by deprecation. Three years ago Holland was our firm ally. It 

 has now turned to the general hope or terror of the continent. The 

 family connexion, which, in ordinary cases, is of the slightest possible 

 political strength, has now been framed into a principle of public 

 policy; and Holland, trembling for Belgium, and forced to choose 

 between the alliance of England and Russia, has made her choice, and 

 forms one of the steps to the universal throne. Prussia, a few years 

 since, connected by the closest bonds with England, has made her choice, 

 and is now less an ally than a vassal of Russia. Austria, as much a 

 natural ally of England as Cornwall is a province of it, has shaped her 

 policy to the time ; and we shall see her, on the first demand for her 

 services, submissively marching under the general banner, and receiving 

 her hire in the seizure of the frontier provinces of Servia. Such are 

 the fruits of the policy, the vigour, and the boasted coup-d'ceil of a 

 military cabinet. 



One transaction has been lauded by the creatures of the cabinet, as a 

 compensation for this mass of failure. The Premier has placed Prince 

 Leopold on the seat of sovereignty in Greece. The value of this service 

 to England is still in the womb of time. Its direct result may be to 

 increase the bitterness of the continent against a country which exhibits 

 the exact degree of those qualities most provocative of contemptuous 

 jealousy a passion for meddling, divested of the power of effective in- 

 terference. To any hope arising from the individual character of the 

 new made sovereign, we are utterly insensible ; unless that hope is to 

 be founded on the thorough knowledge of his being the last man 

 upon earth capable of looking to any thing but his own objects. The 

 experience of twelve years has turned the name of this man into 

 general neglect among ourselves. How shall we conceive that he will be 

 fitter to earn respect among a people on whom he is forced, who must 

 feel his presence a proof that they have only shifted masters, and who 

 can know nothing of him beforehand, but as a most unpopular pensioner 

 of England, and nothing afterwards, but as a royal tool, a permitted 

 agent of the governments of Europe ? 



Of the personal character of Prince Leopold it cannot be necessary to 

 speak in England. He has contrived to live down every thing in the 

 shape of that public regard which connected itself with the husband of 

 the Princess Charlotte ; his use of his enormous pension has become a 

 proverb ; and, with a magnificent income, eminent rank, and first-rate 

 opportunities of establishing himself in the very highest place of the 

 most honourable popular opinion, all he has effected is that we shall be 

 rejoiced to get rid of him. But he is to be a pensioner still, a burthen 

 on the country to the amount of 50,000/. a year ; and after having paid 



